Mangokuura (Suburb of Ishinomaki)

Most of the supplies are now distributed to neighborhoods where food and supplies are impossible to buy. Word is spread door to door and then people line up to get what they need most. Today we set 10 points to each person to spend any way they want. For example, 3 cucumbers was 1 point, 1 apple was 1 point, etc. People appreciate this orderly way of doing things.

Aidan came for the first time on this trip to help out. Everyone loved having him as their "shopkeeper."









Look at where the water line is on the house below. Almost three times my height! That is the standing water line. Imagine how much higher the initial waves were! How did this house stand in the way of a rushing torrent that high? Very few did.

Supply Collection Continues...

A photographer for The Japan Times came by and took these fabulous photos while we were collecting supplies in the community room of our building for the next trip to Tohoku. I feel bad though that the focus of the pictures is Abi and I. Hundreds are involved. Fortunately the article focuses on the moms. The article went to print on April 1.



I took this one of Sonoda-san and her two daughters drawing pictures for the boxes.

4 Ton Truck

On Saturday, we received a wonderful gift from a local company. They paid for a 4 ton truck and 2 professional drivers to take supplies for us to hard hit areas. At 6 a.m., neighbors from our community of Tsukishima once again gathered at the base of our building to fill a truck with food, water, clothes, and other supplies they had gathered. These were then unloaded 6 hours north in Higashi Matsushima (pictured below), where people could freely take whatever was needed. All stores of any kind are still closed in tsunami affected areas, so people living in their houses depend on donations like this to provide for their families. The location of this "open air store" was announced by radio all day Friday by the Nippon Foundation, our first collaboration with this non-profit organization. I made contact with them in an emergency shelter on my previous trip up north.

Beauty & Brokenness in Japan

Open Air Stores

These are the living conditions for most people in Ishinomaki. Disease is beginning to spread through shelters, so people are doing everything they can to stay in what is left of their homes. But they have a huge problem! No running water, no electricity, no food...every store, restaurant, supermarket, gas station...everything in the city was covered with water and is now closed.

The next phase of helping people involves open air stores for these communities. I went with fellow members of Grace City Church to visit the city hall, where they provided us with a "guide" to help distribute food. We set out the boxes and let people come and get what they need: water, food, supplies, medicine, and clothes. The most at any one time was probably around 50 people. We also talked with them and just listened...stories too sad for me to even write.

We have partnered up with a local non-profit who hold meetings every evening (!) with volunteer leaders, sharing stories from the day and needs found, and strategizing for the next day while looking at a map. On Saturday, our community in Tsukishima is sending a 4 ton truck of supplies to the area to create an "open air store" which will be announced via radio all day today.

People have responded well to allowing us to help clean their homes and neighborhoods with them. We plan to set up foot washing stations next trip to meet a practical need and to show that we are there to serve.

Food Delivery In Ishinomaki

21,000 people are living in emergency shelters in Ishinomaki, a city behind the others in delivering much needed supplies because all of the roads in the city were buried in sand, mud, and debris. Only in the past few days have roads been cleared, and water still remains in many parts of the city.

The water line was as high as 25 feet in some places! Boats, cars, and houses were distributed throughout the city. It will be quite some time before all the debris can be carried out of the city. Matt Chase, fellow Mission to the World missionary, and I walked the street a little and gave some food and water to people who were sweeping out their stores and homes. One man swelled up in tears in thankfulness.

Food was first delivered to a hospital and then an elementary school where 500 people were staying. The line from our truck to the inside of the school involved perhaps 100 people. The need for supplies was big. The volunteers let me take a turn with "taki dasi," stirring food in a pot as big as a bathtub!

Boats Hit By Tsunami

All photos taken on March 23, 2011 in Ichinomaki, Japan.

Tsunami Live Footage

This is live footage taken of the tsunami by a man I met last Thursday and today at the temple in Higashi Matsushima that was functioning as an emergency shelter. This Chinese oyster farmer named Chaweitang (spelling?) gave me this amazing video shot taken just seconds after the tsunami hit and told me his story. There was no siren or warning that the wave was coming. He saw the tsunami and just started running, making it to the stairs of the elementary school mentioned earlier (blog entry "Emergency Shelter") just 30 seconds before the wave came!

Sunday night everyone who had helped load relief supplies was invited to bring their families, share stories, watch a movie of the work done so far, and talk about where we are going from here.

Monday morning two trucks were loaded in the rain for a four day trip in Sendai, communicating and coordinating with churches, organizations, and the government to decide how best to proceed.

Tuesday morning we met in the basement of Shiogama Bible Baptist Church with others to study hard hit areas, coordinate efforts, and make plans for the day.

Rice Balls Find A Home

This is the receiving end of the 1,047 balls of rice made in our apartment in Tokyo (blog "Onigiri Factory" below). Everyone is living and sleeping in this gymnasium turned into an emergency shelter. This area is in Iwaki just south of the evacuation zone from the nuclear reactors.

A Church Reunited

Pastor Sato leads one of the biggest churches in Japan with over 200 people. During the earthquake he was attending the graduation of his son-in-law from seminary at Tokyo Christian Institute (TCI) in Chiba. His church is north of Iwaki, in an area devastated first by earthquake, then tsunami (which wiped out the train station and half the town), and THEN the radiation from the nuclear reactors! No one is allowed to return to that area for months. The evacuation was so quick that people had nothing but the clothes on their back. He was desperately worried and arranged for an emergency shelter in a church in Western Fukushima to try to account for everybody.

Seima Aoyagi (assistant pastor Grace City Church Tokyo), Matt Chase (Mission to the World missionary), and I headed out with a truck full of supplies to TCI to meet up with the pastor and start heading toward Aizuwakamatsu. We didn't know if we had enough diesel fuel to make it that far and definitely didn't have enough to get back. Nevertheless, we left having faith that God would provide what we needed along the way.

It took 14 hours to reach the temporary emergency shelter using back roads the whole way, then we found about 25 of the evacuees. Another 25 or so were at the hospital being checked for radiation poisoning. The other 150 church members were still unaccounted for! The first thing that happened when we arrived was not unloading the truck but a worship service. People need worship!

The pastor gathered the people and started to sing a hymn "What A Friend We Have In Jesus." Everybody joined in. He then began speaking from scripture. "The last time we had worship together, I spoke from Habakkuk. God's word, God's promises, and God's love for us are just as real now as they were before the earthquake. It is written 'Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.'" The pastor then went on to show that God does watch over us and cares for us. There were MANY tears.

After worship, we unloaded the truck, had lunch, then most of the men headed out to bring gas to stranded cars and check on the people at the hospital. I noticed a keyboard in the corner, mentioned to the pastor's wife that I was a musician, and asked if she would like a concert. Immediately she gathered the people. I started "It's hard to have words in situations like this, but that is why God gave us music." After playing a number of pieces, I played a gospel arrangement of "Amazing Grace" and gave a short testimony. It was a pretty powerful time, and they didn't want me to stop. Maybe I should be traveling around to the emergency shelters with not just food but music? Thinking about how to care for people emotionally and spiritually from here on out...

Disaster Response in Japan

Mission to the World made a video from my pictures for use in spreading the word about disaster relief efforts here in Japan.

MTW - Disaster Response in Japan from Go Global on Vimeo.

People survived the tsunami

This blog entry has been the hardest to write so far because the experiences of the people I met were so vivid and real. The beautiful temple to the left is about a 15 minute walk on the other side of a hill from the town shown in the previous blogs about the emergency shelter and cars hit by the tsunami. Every square inch of floor is covered with futons and people of all ages sleeping. This unofficial emergency shelter was very low on supplies for the 350 people who were there. The head of the temple told us the biggest needs besides food and water were shoes (tsunami brought with it thick mud that ruined the shoes they had), lanterns with batteries (very dark at night with no electricity), underclothes (no way to take a shower), and clothes (all washed away.

After unloading the truck, a 3 hour line formed to fill everybody's empty soda bottles from the 300 liter and 100 liter water containers we had brought. During that time, we exchanged stories about the earthquake. The people found my experiences of feeling the earthquake from in the subway and my family's experience from the 28th floor funny and kept joking with me about it. The earthquake in their town was a A LOT stronger than in Tokyo. Everyone fell down.

The man two to the left of me in the picture below (all people I took pictures of gave me permission) was in his house when the tsunami hit. It was immediately covered with water. He ran to the second floor with the water quickly following him until it crept above his waist but thankfully stopped. He stayed on the second floor wet and shivering from the cold (it was below freezing) until the water subsided enough for him to leave his house for the shelter 15 hours later. He kept telling me how scary it was. He didn't know if the water was going to keep rising or not, or whether the house was going to be washed away. Most of the deaths in the town occurred from houses collapsing around them.

Most who survived immediately realized the danger of a tsunami. The man to the right of me ran up to high ground and from there witnessed the incoming tsunami. He kept pointing to the hill next to us "Can you imagine a wave that big? That's how big it was." It was about 35 feet high! Impossible for people to live through such a powerful surge of water. His house was completely destroyed.

Another man experienced the quake while out in the bay on a small boat. His first thought also was "Tsunami!" He rowed as fast as he could to shore, ran through the town, and climbed the large hill. The tsunami came 10 minutes later. His boat was destroyed in the wave as it smashed into buildings.

Onigiri Factory

Our home became an "onigiri factory." Onigiri are balls of rice with different things mixed into the rices...salted salmon, seaweed, etc. The two trucks going up to Iwaki tonight are bringing 1,000 (actually 1,047!) handmade balls of rice for people in the emergency shelters. Iwaki is on the border of the official evacuation zone from the nuclear power plant explosions. Because of fear of radiation, truck drivers are refusing to drive to the area to restock supermarkets. People cannot leave because there is no gas. We help evacuate people with every truck we send to Iwaki. Only recently did people receive the water they need. One lady in the group has a sister living in Iwaki, who she is very worried about.

Long lines for gas

Everywhere we went in Sendai there were extremely long lines for gas. The lucky ones got gas in 7 hours. Others had to wait as much as 2 days! This video shows one of the lines, and yet the gas station isn't even open! The drivers were waiting, hoping, that the gas station would be able to open with gas. There were also extremely long lines for kerosene, which people need to stay warm. It has been well below freezing since the earthquake.

There are also long lines for supermarkets. If you don't wait in line, you don't eat. Groceries are rationed strictly...one cup of ramen per person, one this, one that...

Oba-san's House

While we were in the area, we went into the second floor of this house to retrieve clothes for the oba-san (older lady) who lived there. We met her and her granddaughter at a church in Sendai. Below are pictures of the living room. I didn't recognize the piano at first. Such devastation!


Fortunately she was traveling by train during the time of the tsunami and was unhurt. Her house is one of the few still standing in the area.